


Balance

by warqueenfuriosa



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Celebrate Rogue One Week, Everybody Lives, Friendship, Gen, Happy Ending, Prompt Fill, my 50th fic on ao3!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-22 00:23:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14925852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warqueenfuriosa/pseuds/warqueenfuriosa
Summary: Cassian struggles without K-2SO in the aftermath of Scarif. The team comes together to bring the droid back to life.





	Balance

**Author's Note:**

> Written for @celebraterogueone on tumblr for Cassian Week. Prompt: smiles/tears. Hope you like it and feel free to drop by tumblr and say hi @warqueenfuriosa

Cassian shuffled into his too dark, too quiet room, dropped his pack by the door, heedless of where it landed. As he slowly peeled off his jacket—wincing at the pull in his side—he kept his gaze trained on the patch of light spilling across the floor from the hallway.

He didn’t look at the shadowy corner with the charging port that sat unused, empty.

Cassain closed the door behind him, half-fell into bed without bothering to take off his shoes or the rest of his clothes. He rubbed at his aching side and flung one arm over his eyes. Just a few hours of sleep, a little rest was all he needed to keep going, keep moving.

He’d considered transferring to another room. One that didn’t feel so…cavernous and hollow. That dark corner tugged at him, drawing his attention towards it even when he stubbornly focused elsewhere. The floor. The walls. The ceiling. The back of his eyelids. Anywhere but that black hole of emptiness where he refused to look.

But it wouldn’t make any difference in the end. There were charging ports in every room, on every ship.

Cassian groaned as he pushed himself up to a sitting position, elbows on his knees. Maybe a shower would get him to stop thinking so much…

Scrubbing a hand over his face, he rose to his feet and…wobbled. Off balance.

He wasn’t dizzy. It wasn’t a head rush from standing up too fast. It had been like this since Scarif—this off-kilter, unevenness that he couldn’t quite make right and he couldn’t quite explain.

Although Cassian _felt_ the answer. Felt it but couldn’t bring himself to put words to it.

He shook his head and when he flicked on the light in the ‘fresher, a gleam on the nightstand caught his attention. Cassian glanced down.

Coiled there in a neat circle was a circuitry cooling cable. It looked like it had seen better days—a little frayed at one end with a kink in the middle of it that had creased the cable slightly.

He had definitely not put that there. He had no need of it.

For a moment, Cassian considered tossing it in the trash.

Then he closed the door to the ‘fresher and didn’t touch the cable at all.

***

Jyn kept staring at him over the rim of her cup during breakfast. But when Cassian turned his head to meet her stare, she looked away.

Lack of eye contact from Jyn. That was never a good sign.

Cassian cleared his throat, drumming his fingers on the handle of his caf cup.

“So,” he said. “Anyone want to tell me who broke into my room yesterday?”

Bodhi and Baze turned to face him. Bodhi’s eyes were wide, innocent—or feigning innocence incredibly well. Baze appeared indifferent. Jyn was stirring her caf as if it took every ounce of her concentration.

“Was anything taken?” Bodhi said.

A pause settled over the table as Cassian regarded him for a moment. Bodhi could keep a secret until his dying day. Nothing would drag the truth out of him if he wasn’t willing to give it.

“No,” Cassian said at last. “Something was left behind. And I get the feeling it was on purpose.”

Jyn poked her tongue into her cheek and cast a glance across the table to Baze.

A faint smile tugged at the corner of Chirrut’s mouth.

“I certainly hope you aren’t blaming the blind guy for this,” he said.

“That depends,” Cassian replied. “If the blame belongs there, I certainly will.”

Surprisingly, Baze was the first one to crack. He cleared his throat, pushed his breakfast tray away from him and folded his arms across the tabletop.

“It’s time you gave him a chance.”

Cassian clenched his teeth. He balled up his napkin, tossed it on his tray as he stood.

“We’ve been over this,” he said.

Bodhi spread his hands in supplication. “But if we just tried—“

“No,” Cassian cut in, a little harsh.

He stifled a grimace and lowered his voice.

“No,” he repeated, still firm with resolve. “I’ve stated my reasons why I don’t want any attempts made whatsoever by anyone.”

As Cassian turned to go, for the first time during breakfast, Jyn spoke.

“The rest of us got out alive,” she said. “Maybe a few pieces are missing but we’re still kickin’.”

Cassian stopped, his back to the table.

There was a webbing of scars up the side of Jyn’s neck, burn marks that remained livid red. Her hair had been singed and she had chopped it even shorter until it curled around her ears, brushing her eyelashes.

Bodhi lost his hearing in one ear. His left arm had been replaced with a metal prosthetic that he still struggled to adjust to on some days.

Chirrut walked with a permanent limp in his right leg.

Baze’s lungs never worked quite right again, causing him to wheeze in damp, humid weather.

Cassian had fought tooth and nail to see that his team stayed together after Scarif. Dravin wanted to separate them. Mon Mothma had planned assignments for them to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. But Cassian held onto each and every member of Rogue One with an iron grip and refused to let them go.

Except for one.

“He was never alive to begin with,” Cassian replied.

***

Two weeks passed and no one said anything more about it. Cassian knew it wasn’t the end of the efforts to convince him to change his mind, but for now, he would accept the momentary lull of peace and quiet.

As Jyn and Cassian prepared to head off-world, Cassian found a servomotor in his pack. When his fingers brushed it, he hissed through his teeth and pulled away, staring at the offending piece as if it had burned him with its cold metal.

“Jyn,” he growled.

Jyn busied herself with checking the energy cell of her blaster.

“Hmm?”

“You’re too smart to play dumb,” Cassian replied in a flat voice.

Jyn glanced up, eyebrows raised. Cassian pointed to the offending servomotor in his pack. She shrugged.

“Don’t look at me,” she said.

“I _am_ looking at you. This is your doing. Bodhi has been running supplies for the past week. I doubt Chirrut even knows what… _this_ …is.”

“Baze might.”

“It’s not a weapon. He’d hardly be interested.”

Jyn holstered her blaster and rummaged through her own pack, checking to make sure everything was in its proper place before departure.

“Touchy,” she muttered.

Cassian tilted his head back with a sigh.

“Jyn,” he repeated, softer this time, but that edge to his voice remained sharp.

“What?” she shot back.

Cassian just stared at her, waiting.

“This was your idea, wasn’t it?” he said.

Jyn huffed and slapped her pack closed, shoved it aside.

“Actually, the credit belongs to all of us. It’s been a year since Scarif and you’re just being stubborn.”

“I am not—“

“You are. So we’ve decided to take matters into our own hands and light a fire under your ass.”

Cassian opened his mouth to object but Jyn plowed on.

“And if you help, that will improve our chances of success.”

Cassian pressed his lips into a thin line of disapproval. Jyn tilted her head with a small, tight smile as if to say, _don’t argue, I’ll win anyway._

“Why is it so important to you?” he said.

The edge had slipped out of his voice, replaced with fatigue, the slow creep of defeat.

Jyn shrugged and crossed her arms.

“He said the odds of survival were slim,” she said. “I want to rub his nose in it that we made it out.”

Cassian continued to stare at her, waiting for more. Jyn released a puff of air and her arms slid to her sides. She leaned one shoulder against the ship, one hand out, palm up like a peace offering.

“Come on, Cassian,” she said. “He was with you for…how long?”

Cassian dropped his gaze to the floor, silent.

Years. Decades by now.

“You didn’t leave any of us behind,” Jyn added. “I don’t think you really want to leave K behind either.”

Cassian blinked as if he’d been slapped. He tried his damnedest to avoid any mention of K’s name. It felt raw in his mouth, reverberating with a bitter, echoing timbre that he didn’t like to taste. It didn’t sound any better coming from someone else’s mouth either.

Cassian scrubbed a hand through his hair with a heavy sigh.

“It’s different,” he said.

“How?”

“Because I can’t lose him again, Jyn,” Cassian said, tight, strained. “Say we piece him together again. And then K looks at me…”

He trailed off, unable to finish what he feared the most.

What if K didn’t recognize him?

Cassian would gladly erase his own scars or the scars of his team. But it wasn’t the same as the loss of K’s memories, starting from scratch. Everything they had been through, from the moment Cassian first fired up K after months of tinkering on him, to that final look they had exchanged on Scarif before the door closed and they went their separate ways.

All of it, gone.

And it would only serve as a reminder that K was never coming back.

“I don’t want a blank slate,” Cassian muttered. “End of story.”

He pulled himself into the pilot’s seat, settled the headset over his ears, shutting out any further arguments from Jyn on the subject.

***

Four days later, when Jyn and Cassian returned to base, Bodhi, Baze, and Chirrut were waiting for them on the landing pad. Even after a year had passed, Cassian still caught himself searching for that tall, gangly, gleaming metallic figure in the distance. Waiting for K-2SO.

Cassian made his excuses to his team and retreated to his quarters. He flung a blanket over the gaping hole of the empty charging port—out of sight, out of mind…hopefully—as he headed to the ‘fresher, eager to wash four days’ worth of grime from his skin.

Without really paying attention to what he was doing, he absently drew back the curtain, reached down to turn on the water…

And Cassian found himself staring into the vacant expression of a droid head, tucked into a corner of the shower.

It couldn’t have been Jyn. Cassian had left her on the landing pad and there was no way she reached his quarters before he did.

There were three other culprits to consider but this oh-so-hilarious sense of humor belonged to one certain individual in particular.

Cassian growled, wrapped the head in a towel, careful not to touch it any more than he had to, and marched out of his quarters. He pounded on Chirrut’s door.

Chirrut answered with a yawn. Cassian shoved the droid head into his arms. Chirrut startled and grabbed it.

“Stop this,” Cassian said. “Now. That’s an order.”

Before Chirrut could reply, Cassian turned and stalked back to his room.

***

For a little while, it seemed Rogue One was on pins and needles around him.

Bodhi claimed to be busy in an effort to avoid occupying the same room as Cassian for more than a minute or two. Chirrut pretended Cassian wasn’t there. Baze jostled Cassian around, bumping into his shoulder, crowding into his space on purpose, but never really looked at him.

And Jyn…Jyn, remarkably, didn’t say much of anything. Cassian had expected her to press the issue, argue with him, day in and day out, until he relented and admitted she was right.

But she didn’t. She simply sat there. Quietly.

Which was not good.

She was plotting something.

Just as Cassian suspected, a faint little _tap-tap-tap_ came at Cassian’s door less than a week later. He rolled onto his good side…

And there was the gaping black corner of the charging port. The blanket he had thrown over it a few days ago hung limp and tired at a haphazard angle that only emphasized the emptiness.

 _Tap-tap-tap_.

Cassian groaned, flopped his pillow to the side and flung his feet to the ground. As he shuffled to the door, he heard the whispering.

“The other wire.” Jyn’s voice.

“I know how to bypass security, Jyn.” Bodhi’s voice.

“But you’re doing it wrong.”

“Stop looking over my shoulder. You’re making me nervous.”

“Fine.”

A heartbeat of silence. The door beeped.

“Told you. The other wire.”

“Kriff.”

Cassian opened the door to find his team standing there, blinking. Chirrut had the droid’s head tucked under one arm. Baze was carrying an entire sack that bulged at odd angles. No doubt full of spare droid parts.

Jyn wasted no time pushing past him. Chirrut tapped Cassian’s chest with his staff.

“Good evening, Captain,” he said. “Not to worry. We will intrude upon your time only for a short while. Then you can continue to rest.”

Cassian watched as his team filed into his room and then, unceremoniously made themselves at home on the floor.

“What the hell is going on?” Cassian demanded.

“Don’t mind us,” Jyn said without looking up. “We’ll get out of your hair in a minute.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.

Baze upended the sack he was carrying, sending an assortment of droid parts spilling across the floor.

No one paid Cassian any attention. They continued to root through the pile of parts. Chirrut placed the droid head beside his knee and gave it an affectionate pat.

There was an empty space on the floor, in between Jyn and Bodhi. A space left empty on purpose. A place for him, should he choose to join in and raise their chances of success.

Cassian shook his head and turned away.

“I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t do this.”

“Hey,” Jyn said, scrambling to her feet. “I’ve been thinking about what you said before and—“

“And you decided to ignore it. Clearly.”

“Well…yes. But with a good reason, I swear—“

“There is no good reason for this, Jyn,” Cassian said, chin jutted forward, the lines of his body rigid and tight.

There were too many places he couldn’t look in his room now—the charging port, the droid head, the droid parts. He was vibrating with fury, with fear, and looking at Jyn wasn’t helping either.

“I told you how I felt about this,” he continued. “I had hoped that at least one of you would have the decency to respect my wishes and stop shoving this—“ Cassian gestured to encompass the entirety of his room. “—in my kriffing face repeatedly.”

He fled into the vacant corridor so quickly that he flung out an arm to maintain his balance, as if searching for something—someone—to stabilize him, keep him steady.

But all he felt was emptiness.

***

Cassian didn’t grab his jacket before he left his room and the base was much colder at night when he was only wearing thin pajama pants and a thread-bare t-shirt. He took refuge in the cockpit of his ship and turned the heat up to a low, pleasant warmth.

The co-pilot’s seat was empty beside him. Cassian stared at it, at the place K should have been. Even though it had become Bodhi’s seat, Cassian could still envision K-2SO sitting there, his head nearly touching the ceiling of the ship.

But Bodhi wasn’t here right now. Neither was K.

For a moment, Cassian almost felt as if twenty years hadn’t passed and he was six years old again, taking refuge in the remnants of some rusted out ship he stumbled across. He had been too cold then as well, shivering in summer clothes not meant to withstand the frigid night.

Cassian reached out, placed his hand on the co-pilot’s seat.

He wasn’t alone. He had a team. A stubborn, willful, headstrong…perfect team. A team who was alive, despite impossible odds of survival.

But his team wasn’t complete. Not while that empty hole remained.

“Miss you, buddy,” Cassian whispered.

***

Hours later, Cassian dragged himself back to his room, dread and guilt mingled into a potent, weighted mixture. He shouldn’t have snapped like that, even if he was in the right. He deserved the boundaries he had built around his grief to see that it remained buried, for whatever personal reasons of his own.

But when Cassian opened the door, prepared to apologize, his room was empty. A quick search told him that there wasn’t a single droid part to be found. The only part that wasn’t missing was the memory chip he kept on the inside of his jacket pocket—a backup drive for K’s personality, just as a precaution.

He’d never mentioned it to anyone else. It was old, most of the data probably corrupted by now. But it was the last piece of K-2SO that Cassian had left. The thought of offering it up for experimentation that could burn it out, destroy it, made his stomach twist.

Cassian retrieved the chip from his pocket. It wasn’t much bigger than a fingernail, resting in the middle of his palm. He closed his fingers over it, held it close to his heart, and went in search of his team.

***

Cassian found them, sprawled in Bodhi’s room, the door half open.

Baze sat in a chair off to the side, his eyes a little glazed as he surveyed the chaos before him.

Jyn held up a pair of axial pistons from two different models of droid and attempted to piece them together—an impossible task.

Chirrut perched on the edge of Bodhi’s bed, scrubbing at grease stains on the droid head that rested in his lap.

Bodhi looked like he was about to lose his mind.

“Jyn, no,” he said. “Those…those are for two types of droids. They’ll never fit together.”

“But you said they did.”

“I didn’t, actually. I said I wasn’t sure which model we could use so you might as well pick up both of them.”

“That is definitely not what you said.”

“Children,” Baze grumbled. “Play nice. Don’t make me separate you.”

“Sometimes,” Chirrut put in. “Opposites create a rift which in turn provides an opportunity that might be previously overlooked.”

Bodhi made a small frustrated noise. “Okay, that’s…just let me figure out what we have first.”

“Right,” Jyn said. “Inventory.”

Cassian rapped two knuckles on the doorframe. The room went silent. And for a moment, he…hesitated.

Then, slowly, he held out his hand and uncurled his fingers to display the memory chip.

“Pretty sure you’ll need this,” he said.

Bodhi took it with a nod. “We certainly will.”

Jyn nudged a few spare parts aside to make room for Cassian on the floor beside her. He winced slightly as he sank down, tucking his feet underneath him as best he could when his ribs still ached a bit from the position.

Jyn leaned closer until her shoulder bumped his. Cassian glanced at her and she smiled.

“I knew we’d wear you down eventually,” she said.

***

Once Cassian’s hands touched metal, he didn’t want to stop.

For three days, he didn’t move from the floor of Bodhi’s room. He needed a shower, a change of clothes, more than an hour or two of sleep—real sleep, in his own bed, not Bodhi’s floor.

At least he had food. Baze made sure everyone had three square meals each day. He cleared his throat loud enough that it couldn’t be ignored until Cassian noticed the plate beside him. Baze wouldn’t leave him alone until he watched Cassian put at least one bite into his mouth.

In Cassian’s defense, no one else left Bodhi’s room either, not for very long anyway. Chirrut disappeared for fifteen minutes and returned with pillows and blankets for everyone. Jyn left only for caf refills.

By the fourth day, half of a droid torso sat in the middle of the room with every spare inch of surrounding floor space taken up by mattresses, pillows, blankets, and sleeping bodies.

Cassian had twisted and untwisted and soldered so many wires together that his fingers were beginning to bleed. Sometimes, Jyn pried his hand away, wrapped up his cracked and blistered skin with a bacta patch. Other times, Bodhi was the one who elbowed him out of the way.

But Jyn and Bodhi were asleep, along with Chirrut and Baze. Cassian was the only one awake for now, with the blank stare of K’s new head locked on him.

Cassian paused, let his hands come to rest, palms up, on the top of his thighs. Carefully, he reached over Bodhi to the nightstand where the memory chip was safely tucked away in a small box. He pried it loose and sat back on his heels again as the realization of what he was about to do finally sank in.

The droid wasn’t anywhere near ready for the chip. There was still half of a body left to assemble, circuitry to replace, navigation, computing, and sensory systems to calibrate.

But there was enough of K’s new body to tell whether the chip would work or not.

Cassian took in a breath and let it out. Then he slotted the chip into place.

Nothing.

Cassian stared at the droid, his hands at his sides. Waiting. Hoping.

He yanked the chip out, squeezed it tight in his palm, his heart hammering so painfully it was almost hard to breathe.

A hand settled on his shoulder. Cassian flinched, startled, and turned to see Chirrut beside him, though he hadn’t heard or seen Chirrut move.

“Keep trying,” Chirrut said. “You’ve made good progress so far.”

Cassian released a shaky breath and shook his head.

“The data,” he said. “It’s probably useless. Irretrievable. I should have backed up K’s memory more often. I always forgot, I guess. Too busy with…other…things…”

What those other things were, Cassian couldn’t remember now. Insignificant and trivial. How could he have thought that anything was more important than K?

Chirrut squeezed Cassian’s shoulder. He nudged Jyn’s feet aside and sat down on the corner of her mattress. Jyn sighed in her sleep and shifted, one arm drifting over the edge of her pillow, fingers draped across the cold floor.

Chirrut tucked her arm beneath the blanket again.

“You have been with us every step of the way, Captain,” he said. “While our pilot adjusted to his new arm and the loss of hearing in his ear, you remained with him, encouraging him, providing support as needed.”

“That’s not the same—“

“When our criminal-turned-Rebel was in the med bay,” Chirrut continued as if Cassian hadn’t spoken. “You visited every morning and every night. You fought beside her—something few people in her life have done, it would seem.”

Cassian said nothing, toying with the chip in his palm.

“And for Baze, as well as myself,” Chirrut went on. “You have given us a home when our true home was lost.”

Chirrut reached across, closed both hands around Cassian’s hand, enfolding the memory chip in safety.

“You deserve a reason to smile again, Captain,” he said. “But this is not solely for your benefit alone. See that your team becomes whole once more.”

***

Cassian finally surrendered to sleep, slumped against the wall, his chin dipped towards his chest. At some point during the night, Jyn rested her head in his lap, his arm draped around her shoulders.

Cassian didn’t usually spend this much time with his team all at once. They had breakfast together every morning and there were assignments, of course, but to be crammed into one room for over a week, constantly in contact in some way or another was a new, invasive experience that he wasn’t sure what to make of yet.

All he knew was that it was far better than a too dark, too quiet room, with nothing to get his mind off of that empty charging port in the corner.

Baze nudged his knee.

“Wake up.”

Cassian refused to open his eyes, just for another second or two more.

Baze patted his cheek this time with enough sharp insistence that his skin stung.

“Wake up, Andor,” he said. “Where’s that chip of yours?”

Cassian blinked awake, dragging himself to consciousness even as he fumbled in his pocket. Bodhi was crouched over the droid torso, his back to Cassian, his fingers flying over circuitry and modules.

Jyn grumbled and curled into a tighter ball as Cassian eased her off of his lap and moved to Bodhi’s side.

“We’ve short-circuited three computing units,” Bodhi said. “But this one hasn’t burned out so far. It’s holding.”

The chip trembled in Cassian’s hand.

“Cassian.”

Cassian glanced up. Bodhi was looking at him expectantly, as if he had said Cassian’s name several times already, waiting for an answer.

“Put the chip in,” Bodhi said. “It should work this time.”

When Cassian remained motionless, Baze reached over his shoulder and took the chip from him. He slid it into the slot with a final click.

Bodhi sat back, chewing the inside of his cheek. Baze put his hand on top of K’s new head and leaned over, peering into his face. Chirrut laid his staff across his knees, head bowed. Jyn sighed, rubbing at one eye as she pushed herself up on one elbow.

Cassian didn’t dare breathe. Seconds ticked by, one after the other after the other.

“Let me double check the start-up protocols,” Bodhi said. “Maybe I got a few switched around.”

As Bodhi tugged wires free from K’s central panel, a light flickered in K’s eyes then went out.

Cassian clamped a hand on Bodhi’s shoulder with a bruising grip.

“Kriffing stars, Cassian,” Bodhi yelped. “What?”

Cassian couldn’t take his gaze away from K’s new face.

Jyn shoved her blanket aside and knelt on the floor next to Bodhi, leaning over his shoulder for a better look.

Cassian placed his hands on either side of K’s face and touched his forehead to the cool metal of K’s forehead.

“Come on, come on, come one,” he muttered under his breath.

More seconds ticked away.

The rustle of Baze’s clothes shifted on Cassian’s right, signaling that Baze had retreated. Jyn took in a breath to speak, to let him down easy…

The fizz and pop of circuits buzzed beneath Cassian’s hands. His eyes flew open.

With jerky, halting movements, K-2SO straightened and cocked his head.

“Good afternoon, Captain,” he said. “You are looking…not well.”

Cassian managed a wet little laugh, his vision blurred with tears of relief. Jyn, Bodhi, Baze, and Chirrut crowded around him to meet the new K-2SO.

“Captain,” K said. “Would you care to introduce me?”

“These are my friends, K. My team. They’re yours, too.”

K was silent for a moment as he considered that, processing it through his memory caches.

“I believe there has been a mistake. I don’t have friends. As a general rule, I don’t like people at all.” He paused then added, “Except you, Captain.”

“Yep,” Jyn said. “He sounds perfect to me.”

Cassian smiled and for the first time in months, he finally felt balanced again. K-2SO might have a few pieces missing, without memories of Scarif and a completely different body than his original one, but he was here and that was the only thing Cassian cared about.

"It's good to have you back, K."

 

 


End file.
